Look to Venus

The transit of Venus will be visible in India in the early hours of June 6. Earth’s sister-planet has a lot to offer by way of example, close on the heels of the Rio+20 summit that will take place later this month

Earth and Venus were thought to be like two peas in a pod. Venus was perceived as Earth’s mirror image — a twin sister conjoined at birth but separated in an inexplicable twist of cosmic fate. Traditional accounts across a wide swathe of civilisations offer far profounder descriptions. As the symbol of fertility, love, passion and female power and sexuality, Venus has sustained the voracious and creative human imagination for centuries, an inexhaustible source of inspiration to poets, painters, sculptors, writers, astrologers and scientists.

Different From Poetry

Venus emerges from the sea in a clamshell, smiling, innocent and sweet-faced, as the Roman goddess of love in Sandro Botticelli’s classic painting, Birth of Venus. As the Greek goddess Aphrodite, she governs desire and sexuality, and is often depicted holding a mirror. So Venus was Earth’s reflected image, an unscientific but poetic oversimplification of the planet’s retrograde rotation pattern, in perfect opposition to Earth’s own eternal Dervish dance. That’s why, the Sun ‘rises’ in the west and ‘sets’ in the east on Venus.

With 95 per cent of the Earth’s diameter and 80 per cent of the Earth’s mass, Venus is as big (or as small) as Earth. Both have a young surface with impact craters. They have near-similar densities and chemical compositions. In fact, the similarities led early researchers to believe that there was life on Venus. Wrapped in dense clouds and cloaked in secrecy, Venus, however, remained an enigmatic mystery stoking the fires of poetic imagination.

NASA’s Mariner 2, the first spacecraft to venture on a visit to another planet, took the first human-engineered peek at secretive Venus in 1962. In the four decades since then, the findings of 40 Venus missions have confirmed that Venus and Earth have nothing in common. In fact, our closest planet-neighbour has turned out to be the deadliest, broiling hot with sizzling temperatures, trapped in toxic concentrations of carbon dioxide, devoid of water.

The 1989 Venus Orbiting Radar Mission, Magellan, radar-mapped the Venusian surface before plunging, according to plan, into its atmosphere. It was found that with a surface pressure 92 times that of Earth’s, Venus was choking on high levels of carbon dioxide, caused by an extreme greenhouse effect that was trapping so much heat that normal Venusian temperature ranged between 850 and 900 degrees Fahrenheit — far higher than Mercury’s, the planet closest to the Sun.

Wayward Sister

Venus moves sluggishly: So, a single day on the planet — in Earth terms — is longer than a year. It takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis, but only 225 days to revolve round the Sun.

The poisonous yellow sulphuric acid clouds that obscure our vision of the planet also reflect sunlight so effectively that Venus shines brightly, casting shadows on the Earth’s surface, like the Sun and the Moon. To the naked eye, luminous Venus — as the Morning or Evening Star — is a picture of tranquillity and stability. Yet Sumerian accounts describe Venus as Inanna, the tempestuous grand priestess of the heavens, causing lightning and earthquakes, bringing disaster and destruction to Earth. Aztec and Mayan records echo this sentiment of fear and foreboding. “And when it (Venus) newly emerged, much fear came over them; all were frightened. Everywhere, outlets and openings (of houses) were closed up… perchance the light might bring a cause of sickness, something evil when it came to emerge”.

Were these ancient recordings the result of witnessing a newly formed Venus blazing bright in the firmament, behaving unpredictably, still in the throes of a fiery birth?

Arthur C Clarke wonders whether this was the “Star of wonder/Star of light/Star with royal beauty bright” that led the Magi from the east to infant Jesus in Bethlehem. An even likelier explanation, says Clarke, would be a rare conjunction of planets — for, besides Venus, four others are visible to the naked eye: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Sulphurous clouds, a crushing atmosphere, broiling heat — today’s Venus is a far cry from that charming woman to whom Paris offered the golden apple in acknowledgement of her superlative beauty. On June 5, Venus in transit will appear prominently, free from the Sun’s glare. Obsessed as we are with Mars, it is worthwhile to take a good, hard look at our wayward sister-planet as she appears clearly outlined against the Sun’s incandescent disc.

Another Venus?

Maybe, this is a good time for introspection. Will the Earth go the way of Venus? It’s a frightening thought. Since the industrial revolution, we’ve been emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide, mostly through burning fossil fuel. Issues of climate change aggravated by pollution and eco-unfriendly practices are being debated upon. Our closest neighbour is already a hothouse, inhospitable to life. A bit of conceptual reverse engineering simulating the heating of Venus would be instructive. The exercise might enable scientists to foretell the fate of the Earth, and perhaps even forestall it.

The transit of Venus — when Venus passes directly between Earth and Sun — due to happen in the same month as the scheduled Rio+20 Earth Summit is perhaps a cosmic warning that says: “Beware! See what emissions can do to you. Look at me, I can nurture no life. You live on ‘Mother’ Earth, the nurturer. If you abuse her, there will be two of Venus and no more Earth.” Perhaps, it’s time to celebrate what we’ve got on Earth rather than squander it all away.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Author

Narayani Ganesh is a senior editor with The Times of India. She writes on issues concerning the environment, science and technology, travel and tourism, heritage, philosophy, and health. She edits The Speaking Tree Sunday newspaper and daily column of that name, and is a leader writer with the Times of India opinion pages.

Narayani Ganesh is a senior editor with The Times of India. She writes on issues concerning the environment, science and technology, travel and tourism, her. . .